The expense of an expedition entirely depends on the number of sportsmen forming the party, and on their individual requirements, some men being more luxurious than others. Roughly speaking a caravan of fifty porters, five askaris, and a headman will cost 65l. a month, and this will include cost of trade-goods to buy food. It does not, however, include interpreters, cook, tent-boy, or gun-bearers, whose wages vary according to their qualifications; neither does it include arms and ammunition for the men. Interpreters receive the same food allowance (‘posho’) as headmen; cooks and tent-boys the same as askaris. If two or more sportsmen go out together, their individual expenses would be a little less than if they had gone alone. There are very few places, however, where four men can comfortably shoot from the same camp without interfering with each other’s sport, although it can be managed by three. If a party is made up of four guns, I should recommend them to divide, on arriving at their headquarters, and shoot in different localities from two camps.
CHAPTER XVII
THE LION IN SOUTH AFRICA
By F. C. Selous
In those districts of Southern Africa made historic by the stirring narratives of Sir Cornwallis Harris and Gordon Cumming, where but half a century ago every species of wild game native to that part of the world, from the ponderous elephant to the graceful springbuck, was to be met with in such surprising numbers that vast tracts of country assumed the appearance of huge zoological gardens, one may now travel for days without seeing a single wild animal. In British Bechuanaland the elephant and the rhinoceros are as extinct as the mammoth in England, and the myriads of zebras and antelopes which Sir Cornwallis Harris saw daily scouring the plains in commingled herds are now only represented by a few scattered hartebeests, blesbucks, and gemsbucks, which still exist in the country bordering on the Kalahari desert. The high veldt of the Transvaal too, once black with innumerable herds of wildebeests, blesbucks, and springbucks, is at the present day for the sportsman or the naturalist a dreary waste, more devoid of animal life probably than any other sparsely populated country in the world. With the antelopes and buffaloes the beasts of prey have disappeared too, and in many districts where fifty years ago the magnificent music of the lion’s roar was the traveller’s constant lullaby, no sound now disturbs the silence of the night, except indeed the ceaseless rattle of the quartz-crushing machinery in the mining districts.
A GROUP OF SOUTH AFRICAN ANTELOPES
Yet, in spite of the total disappearance of the game in certain districts, it would be a great mistake to say that there is no more big game in Southern Africa; for if we take, as I think one fairly may, South Africa to mean all the country south of the great Zambesi river, then with the single exception of the true quagga (Equus quagga), which is undoubtedly extinct, every wild animal encountered by travellers in the early part of this century may still be met with; for the great square-mouthed rhinoceros (R. Simus) yet lingers in northern Mashonaland; elephants and black rhinoceros (R. bicornis) are still numerous in certain districts; whilst as for buffaloes, zebras, and various species of antelopes, it is difficult to believe that these animals ever existed in greater numbers in Bechuanaland than may still be seen in South-Eastern Africa, in the neighbourhood of the Pungwe river. Here, too, lions are still numerous; so much so that during a period of six weeks spent by the writer in this district last year, 1892, not one single night passed that they were not heard roaring, whilst upon several occasions three or four different troops of them roared round the camp at the same time.
As it is impossible within the limits of a single chapter to give a detailed account of all the rich and varied fauna of South Africa, I will now proceed to say a few words concerning the animal to which I have twice referred, and whose skin is the trophy most coveted by sportsmen. I am often asked, ‘Is the lion a dangerous beast, or is he a cur?’ This is a difficult question to answer, for not only do lions differ much individually in character—one when encountered showing himself to be an animal of a very cowardly nature, whilst another may prove to be very bold and savage—but it would even seem that the disposition of lions, in general, varies in the different large areas of country over which they range. Nothing has struck me more than the different behaviour exhibited by lions encountered in Eastern Africa during several years of travel by a friend of my own and those which I have myself met with in South Africa. My friend is a careful naturalist, an experienced hunter, and a man of absolute reliability, and what he has told me concerning the lions he has met with in Eastern Africa is so different from my own experience that I can only conclude that, speaking generally, those animals differ, as I say, in character in different portions of the continent; and if that is the case, my remarks will only apply to lions in Southern Africa.